


Whoa, wait, he did WHAT?

by LinnetMelody



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-16
Updated: 2011-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinnetMelody/pseuds/LinnetMelody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After episode 1x17, there's a rather pointed clarification that Danny needs to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whoa, wait, he did WHAT?

It wasn’t until Danny was in the shower that it hit him.

He had a special relationship with his shower stall. In the year he’d been on the island, he’d had to install a new showerhead (three-speed, ‘cause he didn’t have someone willing to massage his shoulders after a bad day now) and re-grouted the tile. He’d slipped and bashed his elbow open on the door frame, and was appropriately shocked that a person could bleed that profusely from what he considers a non-vital part of the body. He’d even once been more-than-slightly tipsy and spent half an hour, fully clothed, under freezing cold spray trying to keep the contents of his stomach actually, yanno, _in_ his stomach.

These days he’d admit to using his shower as a sort of …. Okay, he’d say it. A therapist. He’d talk out loud in the steam, practicing some of the new local phrases he’d been learning. He’d have long, engaging monologues to Chin or Steve or the Governor herself about the myriad differences between Hawaii and the mainland and the people who resided thereon. (He did not engage his imaginary Kono in this manner. He’s pretty sure she’d kick his ass even if she was incorporeal.) On especially bad days -- when words actually failed him -- he’d yell in frustrated rage at the moss-colored tiles, calling the not-present Lieutenant Commander McGarrett any and all names he could think of, because he wouldn’t get fired that way.

This time, it hadn’t been that bad. He was sore, yeah, but that was on account of the three-ton classic car he’d been pushing that morning, and the second setting on the showerhead was just the right pressure to fix it. There’d been a dead body or two, and a horde of newsies to talk around and sorta-bully, and there was cement dust in his hair from the explosives Steve had set off in a fucking pawn shop, so he was gonna get clean and get his head back together.

He’d just rinsed his hair for the second time when the light bulb went off. “I mean, come on. A _grenade?_ Who the fuck carries around a damn incendiary devi-- oh. Oh fuck. Oh no he did _not_.”

Danny was still sopping wet when he peeled out of his driveway, aimed the Camaro towards Steve’s house, and floored it.

~***~***~

Steve had his pistol disassembled and strewn across his coffee table when Danny burst into the room, already mid-rant.

“--accountable for that shit, did you? No, of course you did not. Why would anything like ‘responsibility’ or ‘forethought’ or even, hell, ‘self-preservation’ enter into your brain? It’s not like you’ve ever nurtured these traits before! And heaven help the soul who tries to actually guide and steer your stunted, nascent social skills, because the rewards are seriously not even worth--”

“Danny?” Steve, momentarily frozen while his eyes track Danny’s movements, slowly lowered the oil cloth. There’s no blood that he could see, and while Danny’s face might be bright red and have veins pulsing around his hairline, his eyes weren’t panicked or frightened.

They looked … actually, they looked kind of pissed.

“There was a time in my life, McGarrett, when the most I could hope for in this world was to do my best and hope it didn’t get me killed. When I knew that I could count on the training I had and the backup of my buddies to make sure that -- even if things didn’t go completely right? -- they also didn’t go completely fucked up. There would be pimps and gang wars and I might get beat up or bruised, but I knew that I could sleep well at night, because my team protected the innocent. I might lose my life taking out a drug lord, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that my team would make sure that the guy that got me? Wouldn’t be putting any more ten-year-olds in rehab.

“I was actually happy with that life, McGarrett. I was content. And you know what?” Danny charged forward, shoving his face in Steve’s personal space and glaring daggers at him. “I was a naïve fucking moron!”

…Yeah. Seriously pissed.

“Danny, what--” Steve jerked back when Danny’s finger jabbed toward his face.

“No. No talking out of you. You are going to sit there, and you are going to goddamn _listen_ to me for once, and you’re going to understand where I come from. And when we’re done here, you’re going to agree to my demands and you’re going to abide by them, because if you don’t? There are going to be some serious repercussions that, I promise you, will not be pleasant at all.”

Steve nodded his head to show his understanding and tossed the oil cloth onto the floor, giving his partner his undivided attention.

Danny ran his fingers through his hair and took two quick steps back. Steve could almost see the anger pulled back in, tamped down, banked so that it smoldered and seethed under the surface. “The first thing I want you to hear, from my mouth -- and I can’t believe that I actually have to say this out loud to you -- is that I do not have the skills you do. I have never fired a rocket launcher. I have never studied the best way to track four-legged carnivores through barren tundra. I have never actually applied grease paint to my body to obscure my features and make it harder for the enemy to see me in the jungle, though the little boy in me really wants to try it sometime.

“The skill sets you bring to this team are varied, and violent, and have a tendency to be more than a touch vicious, for which I freely blame Uncle Sam and the training you received. My own training, in comparison, had rules and regulations that were undoubtedly different from your own. I had to give an accounting -- in triplicate -- every time I fired my weapon, even if I didn’t actually hit anything with it. I had to chat with slime balls and make nice with murderers and I had to know the rule book inside and out so that when I caught someone? They were good and _caught_ and had no chance of wiggling out on a technicality.

“I make no pretensions that you actually respect the skills that I bring to this job. No,” he raised a finger and pointed it warningly at Steve, who’d opened his mouth. “No, I said you don’t get to talk right now. You listen. I’m positive that you think I’m a rule-bound stick-in-the-mud who can’t actually get things done because he keeps his own hands tied. And you know what? Most days I’m fine with that. Most days, I think ‘Hey, I don’t care if they think I’m some Mainland schmuck’ because I don’t. I don’t, Steve. What I care about is doing what’s right and helping raise my little girl.”

Danny paused, and Steve risked a quick breath before saying, low and soothing, “I respect you, Danno.”

“Oh, you do?” Danny’s eyes went sharp again, and he walked back to the couch, crouching down on both heels to look Steve full in the face.

“Yeah. Of course I do.”

“See, I’m not sure I believe you, Steve.” Danny shook his head and didn’t take his eyes off Steve’s face. “Respect, in a partnership like ours, means keeping the other person in the know, in the loop, yanno? And when there are lines drawn, not crossing over ‘em.”

Steve’s brow furrowed as he frowned slightly. “I tell you, Danno. I tell you everything.”

“No you don’t.” Danny’s voice was soft, now, and implacable. “You don’t tell me everything. You don’t tell me when you leave grenades in my car, Steve.”

Steve felt his eyes go a little wide and knew Danny noticed when he nodded. “My car. That’s my Camaro, Steve. That’s the car I drive out and get groceries with. I could potentially get side-swiped in that car. And now that Grace is big enough, that’s the car where I let her sit in the passenger seat after picking her up from her mother’s.

“This is a line I’m drawing, buddy. Under no circumstances are you to leave any incendiary devices or ordnance of any kind in my vehicle. You may carry said ordnance and devices on your person while you are riding in my car, but you are to keep them on your person and not deposit them in the floorboard or in the trunk or _under the fucking front seat._ This is not negotiable.”

Steve, crowded now against the arm of the couch, nodded quickly. “You got it.”

“I mean it, Steve. You do not cross this line. Ever.”

He nodded again, heartfelt and vehement. “I promise, Danno. I never want to endanger you or Grace like that. Ever. I swear it.”

Danny inhaled deeply and rose off his heels, finally dropping his eyes away from Steve. “Good. That’s … that’s good, then. I’m going to go back home, now, and get some sleep.”

“Okay.” Steve kept his voice low, and did not try to get up off the couch, or … or make any move at all, really. “I’ll see you in the morning, Danny.”

“Yeah.” Danny spun on his heel -- wait, was he _barefoot?_ \-- and walked back out of the room.


End file.
